


Fait Accompli

by Quippy_Username (orphan_account)



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe- Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anti-Walter White, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Healing, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:22:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27928972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Quippy_Username
Summary: In which Mike does not die, returns to Albuquerque after recovering from Walter’s attack, and rescues Jesse from the compound.By Quippy_UsernameUPDATE: This story will not be progressing on ao3 :/ go to third chapter notes for details.
Relationships: Mike Ehrmantraut & Jesse Pinkman
Comments: 34
Kudos: 60





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually my first published fanfic, which means it’s finally time for me to get off my high horse about not having bared my soul to the internet at age 12. Doing so in your 20s is objectively more embarrassing 😂 That said I did have a shit ton of fun with this despite my repeated claims that I just want Jesse Pinkman to be happy and untortured... Enjoy!  
> Edit: Please let me know if y’all are seeing issues with the formatting on your end because it appears to be giving me shit lol

Mike had seen a lot of awful shit in his time, both as a beat cop and then, inevitably, as an enforcer for Gus Fring’s operation. But all that really meant was that he knew in his gut when a job would stick with him. 

“Jesus.”

They’d obviously been keeping the guy down there for a while now, for reasons Mike was pretty sure he didn’t want to know. He was unconscious, had probably been that way for a couple days by the looks of it, so starved and scarred and sickly Mike could hardly make out a human face between the slivers of barred lighting.

He bent down to check the guy’s pulse, figuring he’d make sure the man was stable and uncuffed, at least, before calling the police from a dead Nazi’s phone. His fingers came away slick with blood, but the pulse was there, flighty and faint. Mike’s eyes traveled down toward the man’s hands, wondering which if any of the dead Nazi bastards held the key to the handcuffs and if he would have to pickpocket their corpses one by one to find out, in which case he would leave the uncuffing to the cops. Then his blood ran cold before he could work out why, and his breathing stalled in a way that it hadn’t since he’d first been informed of Fring’s death.

He knew that tattoo. He knew that hand, which he had watched drum on the dashboard of his car to the tune of a very loud and tuneless song, more than once, like a child. Oh, God. 

“Jesse?”

His voice came out more hoarse than he’d intended it to, and almost too low to hear, but Jesse started awake immediately. It was definitely him, even if the features Mike recognized did not quite add up to a whole Jesse Pinkman, if they seemed more foreign to this face than any of its many scars. It was like seeing traces of Jesse in another person, in much the same way Mike used to see traces of Matty or Ignacio in Jesse. 

Jesse was staring at him with a look of bewilderment that was difficult to pin down as being any one thought, as being shocked to see him there or not recognizing him or even thinking he was some kind of apparition. If he had to guess, Mike would say even the kid probably didn’t know where his head was at.

“It’s me, kid, it’s Mike,” He reassured him. Nothing. Just more deer-in-headlights staring from those big sad sack eyes of his. Jesus. 

“Kid, I need you to listen to me, alright? Where are the keys to the cuffs?”

He lifted up the chain between Jesse’s hands with two fingers and raised his eyebrows as an indicator. Jesse looked down at the chain, clearly trying to follow along, then back up at Mike with what looked to be and hopefully was a new sense of understanding. 

“Mike?”

Baby steps. “Yeah, that’s right. Jesse, do you know where they keep the keys?”

More staring, then; “Todd has them.” Jesse took a rattling, worrying breath. He looked as though he were trying to ground himself. “Todd has the keys,” he clarified, as though that hadn’t been what Mike was asking. 

Goddammit. Mike wouldn’t have been surprised to find Todd kicking it back in the clubhouse with his uncle and the rest of those Charles Manson motherfuckers (and all while they’d been keeping Jesse starved and bound in this literal hellhole, Mike’s hands were shaking, he was so mad) but that hadn’t happened, as luck would have it. He’d track down that particular loose end later; no one was getting away with this. 

He had some tools in the car that might work on the cuffs; the kid wasn’t going anywhere with his feet still in shackles. Mike hadn’t even started up the ladder before he heard the abrupt rattling of chains from behind him. 

“Don’t leave,” Jesse said desperately. As usual, his face held all the vulnerability of an open wound and evoked around the same amount of begrudging sympathy, especially now, with the addition of actual open wounds on his face. Mike heard the inflection in his own voice soften automatically.

“I need to get some tools from the car to unlock those cuffs with. I’ll be right back.”

Jesse continued to stare miserably up at him but made no further protestations. Mike allowed himself one last worried glance back at the kid before making his way up the ladder and into the blinding light of the ever angry Albuquerque sun, whose sudden reappearance seemed even more disorienting than normal. 

_Jesus fucking Christ._

He ignored the first stirrings of horror that he knew would hit him hard if he lost focus, opting instead to focus all his energy on the task at hand. This had been his go-to strategy for staying sane since Vietnam, and it had only failed him once, when Matty died. Putting that thought aside as well, Mike swallowed the bile that had been stewing in the back of his throat and made it back to Jesse within the span of three minutes. 

The kid had already lost consciousness again, but woke up to watch Mike work on his handcuffs with a detached sort of interest that made Mike wonder if his captors had kept him sedated, though judging by the thick veneer of sweat slathered across his forehead he was probably just sick, horribly sick. The lockpicking didn’t take long, thankfully, and Mike climbed out of the bunker first before helping Jesse up after him, which was easier than he’d expected, which was almost as easy, actually, as lifting up Kaylee. 

“Let’s get you out of here, kid,” he murmured, more to himself than to Jesse, but the kid definitely heard him, taking hold of Mike’s jacket with trembling hands and looking him in the eye with such raw, unfiltered anguish that Mike narrowly avoided acting on an impulse to push him away. 

“If I leave,” Jesse whispered, his voice so low and urgent that Mike felt all but obligated to hear him out, even though they really didn’t have time for this- “if I leave, they’ll kill Brock. I can’t leave.” 

Brock Cantillo. Jesse’s enthusiasm when he’d talked about his girlfriend and her young son had been somewhat contagious, had given Mike a modicum of hope that the kid might someday be motivated to leave the life behind and let Walter White do his own goddamn dirty work for once. Either that hadn’t happened or Walter hadn’t taken it particularly well, but either way, the irony of Jesse’s one tenuous link to freedom being what eventually doomed him to captivity was not lost on Mike. 

“They killed…” Jesse couldn’t finish his sentence. He choked on the name until he was actually coughing, the little sound he could make causing his shrunken body to shake uncontrollably, and Mike didn’t need a mind reader to know that Andrea Cantillo was dead. Mike had seen stronger men go through less and not come out the other side, and although he’d known from the moment he’d set eyes on that telltale scorpion tattoo that the kid would never fully recover from being abused like a big cat at a roadside zoo, it had only just hit him that he might have been too late to really rescue Jesse Pinkman. The kid might still die from his injuries, or he might live just to give in to his addiction another day, the same way he’d so often given in to Walter White in the single year Mike had known him. He might defy those odds and live on in relative anonymity for years before waking up one day with the sudden realization that things would always be as hard as they were, and deciding to cut his losses. But he wasn’t going to die here, not in or anywhere near this hell pit where he’d been bound and beaten and no doubt expected to die like a dog, Mike would make damn sure of that. 

“Kid-,” he placed a firm hand on one of Jesse’s shoulders, doing his best to ignore the flinch that followed, the way Jesse eyed the hand as though it were a spider that might change course for his face at any moment. “Jesse. Look at me. Listen to me. They’re dead, alright? I killed them.”

Which was true, for the most part at least. Mike had never been one to sugarcoat an admittedly shitty situation, but he would say whatever he needed to to get the kid out of there. He’d have one of his contacts relocate Brock Cantillo and caretaker under some bullshit pretense or another; Todd was the very definition of a bad seed, for sure, but he was also noticeably lacking in brainpower, which was in all likelihood why he’d kept Jesse around. He could never figure out the cook, he would never figure out where to find Brock, and he would be dead soon enough. 

Jesse was gazing up at him with the same awestruck look of adolescent wonder Kaylee would sometimes take on during story time. 

“Really?” He whispered, big eyes boring into Mike’s soul, and Mike, feeling irrationally and irritatingly guilty, managed only a curt nod of confirmation. The kid seemed to collapse in on himself with relief, his face breaking into the sorriest smile Mike had ever seen, laughter convulsing his entire tiny body until he was whimpering instead. Mike helped him to his feet with a light hand and began steering him toward the car, scanning their surroundings for signs of Todd along the way. He had to pick Jesse up to get him into the passenger’s seat, but at least by then the whimpering had subsided, and Jesse was quiet and compliant as could be while being strapped in. 

“Slow down, kid. You’re gonna make yourself sick.” 

As Mike went to pry the sandwich from Jesse’s hands, he saw the kid’s eyes go mean and hard like a dog’s, just for a second. Then Jesse seemed to remember himself, setting the food down slowly and with shaking hands. Tears tracked through the filth on his face as though it were makeup, and Mike could tell he was ashamed. He’d drank the water Mike gave him with a ferocity that had felt too intimate to interrupt, throat bracing with the effort it took just to swallow. 

Jesse was long overdue for a shower, but given that he couldn’t even stand up on his own and seemed somewhat mentally indisposed at the moment, Mike thought it better just to patch him up before letting him hopefully sleep off some of his skittishness. 

Sometimes when he was distracted, which he tried never to be as a rule, Mike would find that the universe had taken advantage of his momentary absentmindedness to transport him back in time. “Arms up,” he said, to Matty, who was too young to dress himself, and Jesse Pinkman, who looked older than Mike would have ever predicted he’d live to be, complied as best he could. 

Jesse’s torso looked like a fourth grader had scribbled all over it with a scalpel. Besides the crude knife wounds Mike had actually been prepared to see, there were swastikas and swears and cigarette burns, the word _RAT_ carved- no, also burned- into his back, put there like an afterthought, written so sloppily as to be almost illegible. Just above it, an area Mike could have sworn once boasted a sugar skull tattoo was now nothing but another burn mark, massive and seeping and circular. The kid’s ribs were so pronounced, he could see which ones had been broken. 

Mike tried to maintain his composure, tried to stifle a sharp intake of breath and keep the Old Testament fury he felt from bleeding into his expression. He tried to think of something to say, something moderately reassuring that would be at least a little bit true. He settled for putting a hand on Jesse’s shoulder, and after a moment, Jesse reached upward to meet it with one of his own. 

The kid passed out as soon as he hit the comforter, but his muscles never relaxed, and the new lines on his face stayed stretched tight. Mike threw a blanket over him, set a glass of water and a bucket by the side of the bed and headed outside to the car to place some calls. 

After he had secured protection for Brock Cantillo and put a hit out on Todd, he turned on the radio. Only the barest details of his shootout with the Nazis were being circulated at the moment, leaving him wistful for his police scanner. They would find his and Jesse’s DNA soon enough, of that he had no doubt, and what was worse, he’d had no time to disable the cameras before they’d made their departure. Finding the kid had blown everything out of the water, but then, Mike supposed that leaving evidence of their involvement behind wasn’t nearly as damning an act as it might have been if they weren’t already fugitives. 

When he had told Walter he would kill him if anything happened to Gus’ nine guys, he’d meant it, and Walter shooting him in the stomach for having the audacity to say true things hadn’t exactly made Mike less inclined to keep that promise. He had literally escaped within an inch of his life; the bullet brushing past a vital organ as it burrowed into his gut. Luckily he knew the area, knew where and when to hide and run, and who to call when shit inevitably hit the fan. 

He had almost placed a second call, to the kid, almost. But he knew Walter would be waiting for him to get in touch, and had worried that the man might kill Jesse on the spot at the first sign of contact between them. 

At some point, he’d subconsciously, stupidly thought that he had learned enough from the decisions he regretted to stop making them. This notion had been debunked by the broadcasting of Jesse Pinkman’s old mugshot, the news saying he’d been swallowed up by the Albuquerque desert after turning on Walter White too late, with no one left to back him up. Mike had felt certain he was dead, had felt sad and angry and guilty and even more motivated to kill Walter White, but that particular regret, at least, could be washed down with a couple of whiskeys; this one lingered in the mouth like medicine. 

Rumors of blue meth still circulating in the area had been what eventually prompted his post-recovery return to Albuquerque. He knew even Walter wouldn’t be stupid enough to stick around New Mexico after screwing himself the way he had, but outsourcing the operation to a literal Nazi cult definitely kept with the man’s track record of engaging in acts of reckless evil as a first resort. The Nazis themselves had been less than forthcoming, to put it lightly, and Mike had thought it a shame until he found Jesse. 

He wondered, suddenly, if he had been on the right track, if Walter had been profiting off of Jesse’s pain even after the partnership dissolved. Mike had refrained from expressing the full extent of his rage in front of the kid, not wanting to escalate an already volatile situation, but now, alone in the car, he brought a hand down on the dashboard and let his face contort with unchecked fury. The blood roaring in his ears was so loud, it nearly drowned out the distant sound of Jesse’s screams. 

Mike reentered the motel room gun drawn, fully expecting to catch Todd or Walter in the act of bludgeoning Jesse to death, but there was just the kid, writhing so badly on the bed that Mike wondered for a split second if he might be having a seizure, and screaming his head off as though he’d been set on fire. The sound was nothing but raw pain personified, almost inhuman in its honesty. 

He was going to get them caught. Mike slung one arm over Jesse’s shoulder and slapped his free hand over the kid’s mouth, then grimaced as Jesse sunk his teeth into it. 

“Easy, kid. Easy. You’re out, alright? Nobody’s gonna hurt you here.”

Jesse’s banshee wail slipped easily through the spaces between his fingers, and Mike was struck all of a sudden by an unusual and distinctly unpleasant feeling of helplessness. 

“Jesse. It’s just me. It’s Mike.”

Nothing he could say was going to help. He stayed put until the kid cried himself to sleep, waiting until Jesse’s screams had worn themselves into whimpers before laying him back down on the bed as gently as possible and parking himself in the seat next to it. 

He only got up once that night, to put the gun up someplace high.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Jesse’s night terrors did not become less frequent as the week progressed, but he did eventually come to recognize that it was Mike who was waking him up, and was able to calm down fairly quickly for the most part after that, albeit with the crutch of some pretty heavy coaching on Mike’s part. He had what Mike suspected to be an actual seizure their second day there, but shortly afterwards his fever broke, and he could stand on his own just long enough to take a shower that was necessarily shorter in length than the one he really needed. 

None of Mike’s clothes would have fit Jesse even before the kid’s brush with starvation, but they made do with a pair of women's yoga pants, stolen from the motel dryer, and a t-shirt that did belong to Mike, which hung off one of Jesse’s shoulders at all times in the way women would sometimes position their sweaters. Mike would always catch the kid hiking it up; it exposed too many burns, bruises and scars for either of their liking, but there was nothing to be done about that. The only feasible way for them to get out of this was to stay holed up in this busted, mostly barren motel on the outskirts of the city until Jesse was just well enough to travel, and then get the hell out of Dodge. Going after Walter with the kid in tow was about the worst idea Mike could conceive of, and having Jesse strike out on his own anytime soon came in at a close second. If they stuck around Albuquerque long enough, Walter would probably find them first, but Mike wasn't about to use the kid as bait, either. He’d come up with another plan, or Walter could rot to death from the inside out in the midst of trying to track them down. Either way worked, really. 

He was able to piece together what had happened through a series of grueling sit downs, all of which were cut short by something or another. Jesse succumbed to two separate breakdowns in the process of trying to tell Mike what Walter had said about Jane Margolis, and still couldn’t seem to bring himself to say Andrea’s name out loud. At one seemingly innocuous point in the story he went completely catatonic, sitting in vigil-like silence for an hour straight before simply nodding off altogether. Mike gave up trying to get anything more out of him after that.

“I’m glad you’re not dead.”

It was the first time Jesse had said anything unprompted since Mike had last seen him almost eleven months prior, so he decided not to respond, leaving room for the kid to elaborate if he felt like it. 

“I thought for sure he’d killed you, like, when he went to give you your money. But I asked Todd and he said he didn’t know anything about that, so.”

Mike couldn’t help but tense up at the sudden mention of Todd. Jesse’s reaction to the news of Hitler Youth’s survival had been so violent and visceral, he doubted either of them would ever speak of it again. 

Jesse looked up at him in lieu of a question. Mike sighed. 

“He tried,” he said, lifting up his shirt partway to show Jesse the resulting scar. The kid stared at it as though he himself didn’t have scars littering the entirety of his torso, then put his head in his hands. He’d shaved off most of his hair and beard against Mike’s advice, and an eventual concession had come with the caveat of leaving the bathroom door open as he did so. Mike did not want to chance him having a panic attack while being left alone in a locked room with a razor. 

“I really fucked up,” Jesse said suddenly, in a small voice. Again, Mike held out for a further explanation, but this time, none came. He sighed. 

“Kid-”

“I’m not a coward.”

Jesse’s expression was one of genuine distress, but this particular outburst came so far out of left field, Mike wasn’t sure what to say. 

“I don’t-”

“I couldn’t let you kill him. It had to be me. After everything _I_ let him do, after everything _I did_ for him, I had to be the one to do it, if it… If it ever came down to that.” 

Mike had the sense that he should maybe call time on this little monologue, seeing as Jesse’s voice kept rising and falling in frequency like a radio signal, and how he looked like he might actually be sick, which was a distinct possibility. But it had been ages since he’d heard the kid talk this much, and, although he wouldn’t have believed it less than a year ago, Mike now found he much preferred an overly talkative Jesse Pinkman to a withdrawn, despondent one. This was progress, at least. 

“But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it, so I thought, hey, maybe, if I could just, like, send him to the big house, I could put a stop to it. Do something right for a change. But of course _he_ didn’t fucking hesitate to like, _outsource_ my murder to those-”

Jesse sucked in a breath the same way an alcoholic would knock back liquor, banging on the table once with an already bruised fist. Mike didn’t stop him. 

“He wouldn’t even shoot me in the head. I should’ve let you kill him.”

Mike let this sit for a moment in the stale air, waiting until Jesse’s breathing had evened out a little before saying his piece. 

“You’re right. You’re not the coward here. And, kid,” he sighed. “I’ll admit you’ve had your fair share of fuckups-”

Jesse laughed bitterly, and Mike held up a hand in the universal gesture for _let me finish_. 

“But what happened to me- that isn’t on you. Hell, what happened to you isn’t even on you. You tried to do the right thing-”

“And it blew up in my face-”

“And it blew up in your face. Which happens. Because this isn’t the movies, and doing the right thing doesn’t always mean things will turn out right. But that also doesn’t necessarily mean it was the wrong thing to do.”

Something about the way the kid was hanging on Mike’s every word made him look every bit as young as he had on their dead drops. 

“You said it yourself, kid. Your biggest mistake was sticking your neck out for that asshole on the off chance he might happen upon a conscience. You don’t need to be taking the rap for him on this one too.”

The reprieve, the relief that came with seeing something not seeded in devastation cross Jesse’s face, was short lived. Mike couldn’t quite get a bead on the expression that followed, but he knew it didn’t bode well. 

“They haven’t found him yet.”

It was a statement, not a question. Even after everything, the kid was still too damn brainwashed to even conceive of a scenario in which Walter White didn’t come out on top. Then again…

“No.”

The breakdown he braced for never came, but Mike knew better than to be relieved. The expression he’d had trouble identifying was one of resolve; a clear harbinger of an argument he had suspected they’d eventually get around to having, and had not exactly been looking forward to.

“If we don’t find him, he’s going to find us.”

“Jesse.”

The warning in his voice was met with a refreshingly characteristic, but otherwise annoying, defiance. 

“He’ll have started back soon as word got out I’m sprung-”

“Kid-”

“He’s probably already here-”

“Which is why we won’t be come Friday-”

“I don’t know what goddamn day it is, Mike-”

“It’s Wednesday. And, kid, have you looked at yourself at all recently? You couldn’t take on a housefly right now, much less the most wanted head case in America.”

“He’s dying.”

“So let him. Let that scumbag rot to death in his own piss, and shit, and sick, on the run and on his own, because I can’t for the life of me think of a single living person who deserves it more. Do not waste another goddamn moment of your life on him.”

“He’ll find me.” 

It was the way Jesse said it that set Mike off. With that same reverent surety the kid had always used in evoking Walter White, like nothing had changed. _He has a plan. Just trust him. He’s not gonna hurt me._

 _He’ll find me_ meant _he’ll come back for me,_ said with all the certainty of the last child left behind at pickup. What the fuck was wrong with these two?

“Goddammit!” He pounded a fist on the table, his patience run into the ground. “We are not-”

Jesse leapt backward as though he’d been burned, stumbling over his chair so that he wound up shored against the wall, and Mike’s anger instantly curdled into guilt. The kid righted himself quick enough, but stayed propped against the drywall for support, arms crossed in a painfully obvious effort to conceal the hitch in his breathing. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, and it only made Mike feel worse. The sickly kitchen lighting illuminated every injury not covered by Jesse’s clothes; scars that split his hairline and ringed his wrists like joints on a marionette, a homophobic slur carved above his right nipple. Unaccounted for burns that spanned the length of one arm. Christ. Hadn’t he told himself he’d look out for this kid? What the hell had happened?

Walter White. There was something in what he’d said to the kid, about not shouldering the considerable burden that was other people’s actions, and still. Looking at Jesse now, seeing the split lip, the bruises at the base of his neck… It reminded Mike of another case, one he’d once discussed with the very man who might as well have put them there himself. He would probably regret that conversation for the rest of his life, would probably have done better to keep the advice he had given Walter for himself. 

No half measures. 

“You’re right,” Jesse whispered, and that was the clincher, a wrenching admission of defeat from one of the most infuriatingly obstinate people Mike had ever met in his long life. He couldn’t accept it, wouldn’t allow it. 

“You’re right, I can’t- I’m not up for it, I know I’m not up for it,” Jesse whispered, tugging at the sleeves of his oversized shirt as though it were a jacket, as though he could tuck himself away inside of it. He swiped a hand over his eyes, and Mike could see they had started to glaze over in the way that meant Jesse wasn’t seeing shit in front of him, was somewhere else entirely. Nothing in his body language indicated he even registered Mike moving toward him. 

“Fuck, man, sometimes I don’t even know where I am, or like, who you are, or even, even what _fucking_ happened to me, like-”

Mike was not a hugger by nature, so it would have been a shame if that particular move hadn’t paid off in calming the kid down. For a brief moment he worried he might have even made things worse; Jesse froze up at the sudden sensation of human contact, but then just as suddenly collapsed into Mike’s arms, clinging to the back of his jacket the way Matty and Kaylee had when trailing after him in the grocery store. Mike patted the back of Jesse’s head awkwardly; he _really_ was not a hugger. 

“You know him,” he said roughly, and the stupid kid looked up at Mike like he hardly dared believe what he was hearing. They were definitely both going to die, or get arrested, but at least they maybe stood a chance of making Walter White’s life a living hell in the process. 

“Better than anyone, I reckon. If anyone can catch that asshole out, it’s you. And if you think that’s the way to go… I’ve got your back, kid.”

Jesse smiled. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I wanna thank y’all so much for all of your support! It really means a lot and even helped me combat my procrastinative tendencies, lol. That being said, I do have a Blue Chrismeth project to get to and I’ve also kind of been neglecting my original artwork and writing lately, so I probably won’t be uploading another chapter for awhile. Also nothing can top the thematic genius of the real Breaking Bad finale and trying to write anything that even comes close to being that satisfying in a narrative sense hurts my head.  
> Also f*ck Walter White.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I figured instead of letting the story progress naturally I would just have the third chapter be the first chapter but from Jesse’s perspective (tw depressing) anyway cheers hope y’all like it
> 
> UPDATE: I have decided to delete my ao3 account because I can’t in good conscience support a site that allows child rpf. I know ao3 is a nonprofit and that it isn’t like I would be supporting them monetarily, but as an adult person on the internet I feel it is my obligation to prioritize the safety of minors over my quarantine fanfic. I hope y’all will respect my decision, and if you’re on other fanfic sights, keep an eye out! I might continue this story somewhere else, I haven’t decided yet. Lastly, thank you for all your support, it really has given me way too much of an ego boost!

He didn’t understand why his body couldn’t just sense his longing to die and shut down. It was his, after all, or it had been. Maybe it could sense that ownership had changed hands, but if the dumb fucking carcass he lugged around like a mascot suit couldn’t even cough up the chemical equivalent of an emergency exit, he doubted that was possible either. Maybe Jack’s warning had wormed its way into his ear canal like a parasite and plummeted straight down into his gut- “You really think dying’s gonna get you out of this, you fucking pussy? Try that again and I’ll bury your brat alive right on top of his dead whore mother, I don’t care if you’re not here to see it, I couldn’t give less of a shit.” 

He hadn’t tried again, and had no hope of dying anytime soon. True, he could barely lift his head, and had thrown up all of this week’s meal, but Jesse had been sick before. He knew this for only the brief respite that it was: soon enough his fever would break, his limbs would calcify, and then it was back to cooking, and to whatever new tortures Todd and Jack and them had devised while he’d been out of commission. They wouldn’t go near him when he was sick, at least, and that was worth the incessant pounding in his head and the roiling in his stomach, even if it wasn’t worth-

“Jesse?”

-The ghosts. At least it wasn’t Mr. White this time. Even the guilt that accompanied seeing people he couldn’t save was preferable to waking up to the sight of those glasses glinting at him from the dark, the eyes behind them dissecting him like a frog, prying his chest open with practiced hands and slowly extracting his heart. Evil fucker. 

Mike was saying something, and yeah, maybe he should at least be trying to listen (and if only you had fucking listened to Mike before this, you dumbfuck), but something about this particular delusion feels different to Jesse, and it’s throwing him off. Mike is wearing an expression he’s pretty sure he’d never seen before on the older man’s face, much less be able to imagine him with. It’s too much of a departure from his trademark brand of straight-shooting stoicism. It’s terrible, and it gives Jesse hope. 

“Mike?”

He didn’t realize he hadn’t been hearing anything until sound snapped back into place like a bullwhip cutting through the air, and, God, was that a sound he knew well. It was just as terrifying, having to wade through this sudden onslaught on his senses to reach Mike’s words, but not nearly as terrifying as the sight of the older man turning to leave. 

He rallied all that was left of his strength to make the plea- _don’t_ _leave_ \- and watched helplessly as Mike left anyway, with hollow reassurances of salvation that Jesse surely would have believed if Mike wasn’t dead, made so by the man Jesse had begged him to spare, rotting away in a shallow grave somewhere or more likely dissolved in acid. 

_You kill Mr. White, you’re gonna have to kill me too._ God, but life was a bitch. Maybe, just maybe, if he closed his eyes, he wouldn’t have to open them again, wouldn’t have to suffer through any more of its cruel ironies. Maybe. 

He wasn’t sure how long it’d been, if he’d been asleep, if he’d gotten any more visitors, if this wasn’t all just some flu-induced acid-trip of a dream, but Mike was back. Maybe this shouldn’t have surprised him as much as it did; he hadn’t so much as flinched the first time he awoke to Mr. White staring him down from the darkness, forget the second time around, but then, well, that piece of shit never could just leave him the fuck alone, so that all made sense. Jane and Andrea were always waiting in the wings even when they weren’t, two avenging, eldritch angels that circled him like vultures, sang to him like sirens, and he would throw himself onto the rocks to be with them if only he could. And then of course there was Gale, who only appeared to him when the scars on his back were still sizzling (the smell, the sound, had been just as much an incentive to scream as the pain), when his stomach gnawed at its own lining for lack of anything else to eat, and when none of this even came close to the worst that they put him through. It was a message, not from the other side, he knew, because the man he’d gunned down in cold blood had been a pacifist and a poet, but from either the universe or his own subconscious. _You deserve this._

Mr. White’s phantom voice was as deafening and dripping with scorn as his real one, it splintered Jesse’s skull like thin ice- _I watched Jane die, junkie, lowlife, coward, I was there-_ but try as he might, he could never hear a goddamn thing Mike said when the other man came to visit. He always had something of utmost importance to say, but all Jesse could ever make out was the urgency of his tone, and the word _kid_ , like a paper cut to the heart. But now, now was different, he could hear him loud and clear and he was tinkering with Jesse’s chains, trying to get him free, and Jesse wanted to cry, to tell him it wouldn’t work, but then… 

His shackles hit the concrete with a weirdly jovial sound that might have made him jump, had he not been so thoroughly stunned by this development, like an ant under a magnifying glass. Speaking of which, there was sun in his eyes, which almost never bode well here, but then, Mike was here too, lifting him out of his six-feet-under cell more gently than any of them would ever deign to do, trying _not_ to hurt him, and Jesse really did start to cry when reality hit him like yet another blow to the head. He couldn’t leave- God, life _was_ a bitch, but at least Mike was alive, one less chain snarled around his ankles like he was fucking Jacob Marley or some shit. 

Then Mike said the words- _they’re dead-_ and something else inside of him was set loose, and when the laughter began to claw at his throat and his chest and his gut like it wasn’t already on the outside of him he thought he just might die after all. 

He wouldn’t remember a lot of this, but he would remember the car ride on the way to the motel, of all things. The familiar landscape that had been denied to him all these months, every nondescript chain restaurant and tube-lighted laundromat, winking at him like the lights of Las Vegas. He pressed his forehead against the passenger's seat window and cried, and no one ripped the hair from his head or forced him to cower underneath the glove compartment or called him a goddamn pussy. The familiar sound of Mike’s breathing evened out his own, and they could almost be making a drop off, he could almost fall asleep, but he was afraid that if he did he’d wake up back in the compound, Jack’s hyena pack leering over the entrance to the bunker as though they knew he’d been dreaming of freedom and thought that was just a fucking riot. 

He didn’t stop chugging the water even after his gag reflex kicked in, choking it all down with defiant gusto until he remembered that time when Todd had tried to give him a real bath and he’d resisted, not wanting that fucking mackerel-eyed motherfucker to touch him, only to be held underneath the water and brought back up more times than he could count, for what felt like hours on end. He wasn’t ever given time to sputter out a surrender, and it had only taken one of Todd’s meaty hands on his chest to keep him pinned beneath the water. 

_They’re dead. I killed them._

He took a deep breath, as though he were going back under, and tore into the pimento without tasting it, the way he’d grown accustomed to doing with whatever table scraps they’d tossed at him. He’d tried stockpiling some food once, for later in the week, but they’d taken it all away and strung him up again for his trouble. 

_You eat when we say you eat, you ungrateful cunt._

Jesse nearly _bit_ Mike when the older man’s hand alighted on his wrist, like the bitch they’d literally branded him as, and the breathtaking shame that he felt at having his animal state laid bare filled him up until his hunger had almost completely dissipated. He kept watching Mike’s face, his body language, for signs of anger, even though he knew on a subliminal level that Mike wasn’t going to hurt him, Mike was his friend, but he just couldn’t seem to help himself. 

Todd’s shirt was up over his head, and Jesse watched Mike’s face fall on his behalf, felt the conciliatory hand on his shoulder like a weight they both carried. He might have started crying again if his eyes hadn’t been far too heavy to manage it, heavy like Todd’s hand on his chest, heavy like a chain around his ankles. He reigned in his whimpering as best he could while Mike tended to his wounds, and then-

_They kept him suspended from the bars sometimes, if he was bad, strung up like Jesus on the cross, the handcuffs that usually wrung his hands and feet warring over his arms, which would have gone numb by the time they brought him down, numb in the way that hurt like hell, and he wouldn’t be able to move, and they knew that._

_It was worse, so much worse, than being held down, this futile helplessness, just screaming bloody murder like a bystander as the blowtorch razed his back, and soon enough he forgot all about trying to move as it set every thought, every memory, his own name up in smoke, and there had never been anything but this hole in the ground where he might have been born and laughter that shadowed pain like a scavenger and the knowledge that he had always belonged here, in hell._

_And he wished that the memories would stay away, because it was always worse knowing that things could have been different, but the hand sealing off his screams was a gag that kept him from crying out to her and laying still was as good as surrender. He anxiously awaited a blow to the head, if none came, he knew, they had something else in mind for him, something worse._

So, imagine his surprise when things began to get, at least a little bit, better. 


End file.
